The Impact of Phthalate Exposure on the Gut Microbiota of Pregnant African American People in Atlanta, Georgia Open Access
Shen, Natalie (Spring 2023)
Abstract
Phthalates, commonly found in household and personal care products, are endocrine disruptors that negatively impact reproductive health and fetal development. They are also associated with gut microbiota modulation, which can increase the risk of pre-eclampsia and preterm birth. Pregnant African Americans have higher concentrations of urinary phthalate metabolites and experience more preterm births compared to Caucasians, yet few studies have investigated the impact of phthalate exposure on the gut microbiota and its implications for pregnancy and birth outcomes in this understudied population. We used data from the Atlanta AA Maternal-Child cohort between 2016-2020 (N = 193). Maternal rectal swabs and urine samples were collected at 8-14 weeks and 24-30 weeks gestation. Gut microbiota profiling was performed via 16S rRNA gene sequencing of rectal swabs while phthalate exposure was measured by urinary metabolite concentration and dichotomized into high and low exposure levels using the median threshold. We compared relative abundance of bacterial genera and alpha-diversity between high and low phthalate exposure groups. We used univariate Spearman correlation and multivariable linear regression to examine the associations between phthalate metabolite concentrations and gut bacterial abundance. We observed a significantly increased alpha-diversity in those with higher MBzP exposures. Additionally, Verrucomicrobiota was negatively associated with MiBP, while Proteobacteria was positively associated with MBP and MEHP. Peptostreptococcus was positively associated with MEP, while Bifidobacterium was negatively associated with MEHP. Our findings provide evidence that maternal gestational phthalate exposure may be associated with altered gut microbiota alpha-diversity. Moreover, higher phthalate exposure is associated with increased abundance of some pathogenic bacterial taxa and decreased abundance of some beneficial bacterial taxa. These negative associations between beneficial bacteria and phthalate metabolites provide insight for potential clinical applications to prevent or treat phthalate-induced disease during pregnancy. While our study sheds light on the potential impact of phthalate metabolites on human health, future research should incorporate more diverse populations, assess dietary and plastic-product use patterns, and employ more advanced bacterial sequencing methods to confirm and expand upon these findings.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction 1
1.1 Phthalates 1
1.2 Phthalates and the gut microbiota 2
1.3 Phthalate health disparities 3
2. Methods 3
2.1 Study participants 3
2.2 Urinary phthalate metabolite identification 4
2.3 Fecal sample collection 5
2.4 Fecal sample processing 6
2.5 Bioinformatic processing 6
2.6 Statistical analysis 6
3. Results 8
3.1 Participant characteristics 8
3.2 Phthalate metabolites 9
3.3 Gut microbiota community structure 9
3.4 Gut bacterial diversity 10
3.5 Correlation analysis 10
3.6 Regression modeling 11
4. Discussion 12
5. Conclusion 18
References 20
List of Tables 26
List of Figures 30
Supplementary Figure 35
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